News & Events

The Prairie Pulse

Crane Trust Certified As Globally Important Bird Area

After much communication with the National Audubon Society, the Crane Trust has been certified as a globally important bird area (IBA) thanks to the Whooping Cranes and the huge abundance of Sandhill Cranes that visit us each year. Our ownership and easements protect 31 miles of Platte River channel that will never be developed further. This September the United States IBA Committee confirmed that the visit of 208,300 Sandhill Cranes and 8 Whooping Cranes in one day in March meant that the Crane Trust is a vital resource for our birds.

Important bird areas are classified by having threatened or range-restricted species, or high concentrations of species beyond a threshold determined by their committee to be fundamental to the endurance of that species. For example, with the Sandhill Crane population estimated at just over 500,000 birds, in one day in March the aerial survey recorded about 38% of the central flyway’s and 31% of the world’s Sandhills on our property. This makes the Crane Trust one of the highest concentrations of cranes anywhere in the world and the largest roost on the Platte River. Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary is classified similarly for their huge crane roosts and regular visits by Whooping Cranes. We expect the full description to go live on the website IBA map in the coming months, as currently only the site report documents the change.

Classifying habitat is not just a national effort by the National Audubon Society. It is actually an international effort crafted by BirdLife International to help determine areas that are of the greatest need for protection by agencies like us and Audubon Society. In fact, to date the BirdLife national partners, like Audubon, have documented more than 12,000 sites in over 200 countries and even the oceans. They expect the important bird areas to cover approximately 7% of the world’s land surface when the projects have finished their inventories. The purpose of these classifications is to provide a ranking system to identify priority areas to conserve and direct funding. Think maximum impact on our avian wildlife for the smallest amount of money. Typically important bird areas must be large enough to protect a population during part of its life cycle, but small enough to be conserved entirely.

Largely because of the lack of submitted data, there are only four globally important bird areas in Nebraska. However, grassland birds are the most drastically declining group in the United States, so it is likely that many more areas can be listed in the future. On a positive note the farm bill and its conservation aspects appear to have stabilized the declines of many grassland birds. Similarly, the conservation efforts of many organizations and individuals is also increasing the population of the Whooping Crane. Conservation works and the Crane Trust strive to increase our protection of migratory birds in need. However, there is a key piece of our puzzle missing at the moment: the largest crane roost in the world has five miles of river channel that is currently unprotected on the south side and therefore vulnerable to be developed from a harmless corn field to a disruptive housing development or sandpit. This global IBA classification says to the world that this land is worth protecting and can help the Crane Trust to gain partners in its preservation.

To support our protection efforts on the south side of the river, Donate Now.

Privacy Policy

What Information Do We Collect?
When you visit our website you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website.

Personal Information You Choose to Provide
We may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your email address, postal address, home or work telephone number and other personal information for such purposes as correspondence, placing an order, requesting an estimate, or participating in online surveys.
If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.

Website Use Information
Similar to other websites, our site may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below, "What Are Cookies?") and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the sites visited just before and just after ours. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.

How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us?
Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing service and support and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of all personal information provided by our users. You may at any time to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers.

What Are Cookies?
Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.

How Do We Use Information Collected From Cookies?
We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users' browsing activities, in order to constantly improve our website and better serve our users. This information assists us to design and arrange our web pages in the most user-friendly manner and to continually improve our website to better meet the needs of our users and prospective users.
Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifying information about you.

Notice of New Services and Changes
Occasionally, we may use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As a user of our website, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers by clicking on a response box when you receive such an offer or by sending us an email request.

How Do We Secure Information Transmissions?
When you send confidential personal information to us on our website, a secure server software which we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is sent to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our website.
Other email that you may send to us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security, credit card, or account numbers to us through an unsecured email.

How Do We Protect Your Information?
Information Security -- We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction.
Evaluation of Information Protection Practices -- Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with organization policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information.
Employee Access, Training and Expectations -- Our organization values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of user information. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.

How Can You Access and Correct Your Information?
You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing us using the contact form provided to you within the site structure of our website.

Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties?
We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this privacy policy.

What About Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information?
We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.

Permission to Use of Materials
The right to download and store or output the materials in our website is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without our express written permission is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on this site may contact us directly.

Terms & Conditions

Donation Refund Policy

We are grateful for your donation and support of our organization. If you have made an error in making your donation or change your mind about contributing to our organization please contact us. Refunds are returned using the original method of payment. If you made your donation by credit card, your refund will be credited to that same credit card.

Automated Recurring Donation Cancellation

Ongoing support is important to enabling projects to continue their work, so we encourage donors to continue to contribute to projects over time. But if you must cancel your recurring donation, please notify us.